ON THIS DAY
January 2, 2017
Introducing our new-look column for 2017, packed with even more titbits to enjoy
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
January 2, 1937 FOr débutantes accustomed to outdoor sports and plain food, London’s 11 months of gaiety this Coronation Year will be a strain. One mother has made a sensible list of rules which her daughter has adopted:
I can stay up as late as I like so long as I remain in bed until midday to make up for it.
I may drink, but moderately and only at mealtimes and at cocktail parties where it would be unfair not to accept the hospitality.
I must not appear ‘cheap’ by showing too great an enthusiasm when asked to dance. January 2, 1960 BrITaIn’S podgy Billy and Bessie Bunters are tackled today in a report by Dr Cyril Thompson, Medical Officer for Wakefield, Yorks, criticising the policy of encouraging children to eat as much as they can.
‘We have noticed some extraordinarily fat children,’ he says. ‘It is a pity that parents are not aware that excessive eating is harmful, and just as dangerous as excessive smoking and spirit drinking.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
LUCY DavIS, 44, right. The actress from Warwickshire voiced Hayley in The archers before making her name as receptionist Dawn Tinsley in BBC sitcom The Office. The daughter of comedian Jasper Carrott, one of her earliest memories is ‘watching him on Tv, waving at him, and getting very upset when he didn’t wave back’. WILLIaM FOx-PITT, 48. The equestrian was the first British rider to become world no. 1 in eventing. He has won three Olympic medals, and made it to rio last year just months after a fall that led to him being placed in an induced coma.
BORN ON THIS DAY
SIr MICHaeL TIPPeTT (1905-1998). He is regarded as one of england’s greatest ever composers, most celebrated for the oratorio a Child Of Our Time. He’d been discouraged from going into music by his headmaster, who said it could never ‘pay for a boiled egg, let alone a boiled shirt’. nOOr InaYaT KHan (19141944). The British secret agent, right, a descendant of Indian royalty, was the first female radio operator sent into nazi-occupied France by the elite Special Operations executive. She was tortured by the Gestapo but revealed nothing. She escaped twice but was caught and executed at Dachau.
ON JANUARY 2...
IN 1971, 66 football fans were killed when crush barriers collapsed at the end of a match between Celtic and rangers at Ibrox. IN 1981, Sheffield police arrested Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire ripper, who had murdered 13 women. IN 2008, oil prices reached $100 a barrel for the first time.
WORD WIZARDRY
NEW WORD OF THE DAY Lumbersexual: Someone who dresses in a hearty, outdoors style GUESS THE DEFINITION Shot-clog (coined 1599), is it ... a) The best man at a wedding. b) Forefinger of the right hand. c) a drinking companion tolerated only because he’s buying the drinks. answer below. PHRASE EXPLAINED By hook or by crook: This refers to a time when the poor were allowed to gather as much wood from their lord’s land as they could rake up from undergrowth with a hook or pull down from trees with a shepherd’s crook.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Be yourself. That’s the worst advice you could give an impressionist
Rory Bremner, impressionist
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHaT do you call a woman with a tortoise on her head? Shelley. answer: c